Aruba Customers Prepare for an Upsurge in Wi-Fi Devices, Mobile Applications and Bandwidth Requirements with 802.11ac
Aruba Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: ARUN) today announced that a growing base
of customers ranging from enterprises to educational institutions are
upgrading their network infrastructures with 802.11ac
Wi-Fi to prepare for an all-wireless world. #GenMobile
employees and students, 31% of whom spend more than 14 hours a week
working on their mobile devices and prefer Wi-Fi over all other
connections1, are driving this trend to gigabit Wi-Fi.
Mobility and the adoption of 802.11ac, with over 750 devices already
Wi-FI CERTIFIED™, are transforming the way people work, live and learn.
Traditionally, the early adopters for emerging technologies like Wi-Fi
have been educational institutions. Milton Scott, CTO for the Catholic
Education Office in Sydney, explains “The classroom will look like a
very different place in just a few years. Computers will be the learning
hub for virtually everything that students and teachers do. This
positions an advanced wireless infrastructure as the critical ingredient
in the education recipe.”
Since introducing its first gigabit Wi-Fi access point (AP), the 220
Series, just over one year ago, Aruba has seen strong demand for
802.11ac from its customers, outpacing the growth it saw when the
802.11n standard was introduced to the market. This growth is consistent
with general industry trends. According to research firm Dell’Oro Group,
global 802.11ac revenue skyrocketed 85% last calendar quarter with
projections that it will exceed 802.11n revenue by more than 13% in 2015.
Both general enterprise customers and those in nearly every vertical
market are making the shift to 802.11ac. Warner Bros., which is part of
the Time Warner family, is a leader in providing content delivery of
entertainment services. The company is relying on 802.11ac to support a
number of its business goals as it evolves into the
office-of-the-future. “Our clients are not just our employees, but also
independent product companies that use our facilities to produce
content, said Doug Crawford, VP of Global Network Operations, Warner
Bros. "By moving to an .11ac infrastructure worldwide, the company will
be able to provide the best innovative, creative environment required
for our business. With .11ac, we can expand our network offerings to
better support the growing number of business applications as well as
live and streaming video, which are critical to our clients."
To stay ahead of market demands and customer mobility requirements,
Aruba has delivered the broadest portfolio of 802.11ac products in the
industry for organizations of all sizes and requirements. Adding to its
flagship AP-220 Series access points this year, Aruba introduced the 270
Series APs, the first enterprise-grade gigabit Wi-Fi solution for
all outdoor environments, followed by the introduction of the 200
Series APs, a set of introductory-level dual radio APs that are
ideal for medium density Wi-Fi environments. Filling out the 802.11ac
product portfolio, Aruba most recently introduced the 210
Series AP for high-performance requirements in medium density
deployments. Aruba’s entire 802.11ac portfolio incorporates key
technologies exclusive to Aruba including the patented ClientMatch™
technology and the ability to operate in either controller-managed or
Aruba Instant/controllerless mode.
Ranked 34th among Top Public National Universities by US News and
World Report, Stony Brook University, part of the State University
of New York (SUNY), recently deployed Aruba’s 802.11ac solutions in 56
of its main campus residence halls. “With over 10,000 students living on
campus, we needed to upgrade our network to support what seems to be an
infinite demand for Wi-Fi,” said James Hart, Director of Network
Services at Stony Brook University. “Given the success of our initial
Aruba 802.11ac deployment in our Javits Center, we knew it was the right
solution for our residence halls and in fact, we will standardize on
802.11ac going forward.”
In addition to existing customer upgrades, Aruba has also been
attracting new university customers with its superior Wi-Fi performance
and resiliency. Illinois State University, ranked among the top
universities in the nation by US News and World Report, is currently
replacing its Meru infrastructure with an Aruba 802.11ac network. “In
order to best support our academic mission and the mobile requirements
of over 20,000 students, 3,600 faculty and staff, and thousands of
guests and visitors annually, we are committed to upgrading our network
across campus,” said Ryan Johnston, Interim Director of Infrastructure,
Operations and Networking at Illinois State University. “After
completing a proof-of-concept in our campus library system comparing
both Aruba and Cisco, we decided to move forward with Aruba’s solutions
due to its ability to support a high density of mobile clients with
impressive speeds and reliability.”
In addition to adoption in enterprises and educational institutions,
Aruba’s 220 Series APs, along with the Aruba 7200
Series Mobility Controllers, recently earned FIPS 140-2 (Federal
Information Processing Standards) certification, making Aruba the only
WLAN vendor with a FIPS-validated 11ac solution available for the
federal market. This gives Aruba federal customers assurance that these
Aruba FIPS- certified products exhibit a level of security, integrity
and interoperability that has been confirmed by independent means and
that they will be interoperable with the protocols tested and listed in
the federal security policy.
With solutions that address both the premier and value ends of the
market, as well as both indoor and outdoor environments, Aruba expects
to continue seeing strong uptake of its mobility portfolio. Aruba
channel partners reflect this growth and are finding significant
opportunities for the newly-introduced cost-optimized 200 Series APs.
InterVision Systems Technologies, an award-winning Aruba partner, has
seen rapid growth over the past year in their wireless deployments
ranging from Web 2.0 startups to global enterprises. “Aruba’s powerful
line of 802.11ac solutions is a new dimension in wireless and addresses
the needs of a wide variety of our customers,” said Jason Gress, founder
and president of InterVision. “Their platform is especially well suited
for customers that are upgrading to 10G/40G networks or have stringent
performance requirements. With their expanding breadth and depth of
802.11ac solutions, Aruba has opened the door for InterVision to capture
more opportunities in the red-hot wireless and mobility market.”
About Aruba Networks, Inc.
Aruba Networks is a leading provider of next-generation network access
solutions for the mobile enterprise. The company designs and delivers
Mobility-Defined Networks that empower IT departments and #GenMobile, a
new generation of tech-savvy users who rely on their mobile devices for
every aspect of work and personal communication. To create a mobility
experience that #GenMobile and IT can rely upon, Aruba Mobility-Defined
Networks™ automate infrastructure-wide performance optimization and
trigger security actions that used to require manual IT intervention.
The results are dramatically improved productivity and lower operational
costs.
Listed on the NASDAQ and Russell 2000® Index, Aruba is based in
Sunnyvale, California, and has operations throughout the Americas,
Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific regions. To learn more,
visit Aruba at http://www.arubanetworks.com.
For real-time news updates follow Aruba on Twitter
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and for the latest technical discussions on mobility and Aruba products
visit Airheads Social at http://community.arubanetworks.com.
© 2014 Aruba Networks, Inc. Aruba Networks’ trademarks include Aruba
Networks®, Aruba The Mobile Edge Company® (stylized), Aruba
Mobility-Defined Networks™, Aruba Mobility Management System®, People
Move Networks Must Follow®, Mobile Edge Architecture®, RFProtect®, Green
Island®, ETips®, ClientMatchTM, Virtual
Intranet AccessTM, ClearPass Access Management
SystemsTM, Aruba InstantTM,
ArubaOSTM, xSecTM,
ServiceEdgeTM, Aruba ClearPass Access
Management SystemTM, AirmeshTM,
AirWaveTM, Aruba CentralTM,
and “ARUBA@WORKTM. All rights reserved. All
other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
1 Report surveyed more than 5,000 respondents across France,
Germany, Nordics, UAE & Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom and USA (March 2014)
Aruba Networks, Inc.
Pavel Radda, +1-408-419-0294
Director of Corporate Communications
pradda@arubanetworks.com
or
LSH Communications for Aruba Networks
Lori Hultin, +1-818-879-4651
Principal
lhultin@arubanetworks.com